Monday, April 18, 2011

I don't know about you guys, but I am kinda bored by all these news and tweets against Microsoft ... don't get me wrong please, you may have realized over these years I have rarely been that nice with M$ products, but there is time to complain, and time time to move forward and appreciate, at least, what we have now compared with what it was 10 years ago.

IE6 is Death, Long Life to IE6

Back in time, IE6 was the kick ass browser every web developer was dreaming about:

tons of security issues to hack in order to have access to any sort of private data (btw ... it's still like that ...)

hybrid JScript/VBScript engines with different privileges for each language and none of them based concretely over a standard

the predecessor of what we call today Ajax

hybrid box model able to understand the worst markup we can possibly imagine so ... wannabe developer friendly (I'll be back to this point later)

... and so on ... with all its glory ...

Why NO future IE will be the next IE6

Now, over last 10 years many things happened:

Firebird changed its name: Long life to Firefox

Webkit made its path down to any sort of device

Chrome became the must have browser

Opera reached version 11.50-beta-HW-accelerated-maybe

we are not alone anymore ... !

We are not living anymore in that era where WEB was letting us think about spiderman, internet was working only inside intranets, and no competitors were showing off yet.We live in a different segment of the browsers timeline, a space where web surfers are more concious, less passive, and specially less ignorant ... we live in a time-frame where internet is almost everywhere and it's even portable in our pockets ... is IE there? We never cared about it, and this is the future!

Feel Free To Choose!

The Antitrust somehow forced Windows OS to let the user chose one out of 3 browsers ... I mean, more than this I wonder what do we expect ...I have never seen such technique in any other Operating System ... but we still complain whatever IE will block people forever ...Moreover, even if there is no choice, nobody in my family is using Internet Explorer, unless it's at work and hopefully to use work related services, not to go on Facebook or the HTML5 version of Youtube ... you know what I mean ...

Legacy Support: The Beginning Of The End

The most common excuse we can ear from a Company about the usage of IE6 is this notorious "legacy code" buzz word. For all those non techy people out there, when you ear this word this is the translation: "We don't have money to update our slow and deprecated infrastructure and we don't have enough competent people able to migrate data and business logic into something better that could bring only more value to our infrastructure and our daily basis work. Since as I have said at the beginning we don't have money, we cannot temporarily hire external Companies that would be able to do that as well ... uh, I forgot to mention we are simply out of the market 'cause we are stuck in year 2000 or earlier and new technologies ... which new technologies?".Moreover, if we want to be reached with our online services by these companies and their employees, it is not just about the browser!All PCs in these companies are most likely relict unable to perform any good with latest "special FXs" we all would like to put in our web ( transitions, shadows, WebGL, etc ... )

In an Ideal Web World

This is how the web development would have been in the ideal world every developer is dreaming about:

write once run everywhere exists

jQuery would have never been created

hobbyist and wannabe web developers, the specie more than ever growing these days mainly thanks to precedent point, would be the only web developer category so ... engineers, go and get a real job!

browsers won't have a name since they all act the same and there is no difference except some performances number

I am kinda joking but let's face reality. "Web For Everybody" does not mean that all browsers will be the same, it means that we must be good enough to be able to bring the web in as many browsers as possible ... this is our job, and if everything would be the same, our job would be the most boring ever ... isn't it?The reason me and many other thousands like me are challenged on daily basis are indeed limits we keep facing in different environments.These limits may be extremely hard to solve, cross platform speaking, but thanks to latest technologies, thanks to latest browsers, and thanks to our hard work, we can already bring what we really want in every platform: this is our job!

IE9, IE10, and the Native HTML5

I honestly do not mind about marketing words, neither users mind that much. They eventually update their browsers and if no happy, they change it again: easy.What I do mind is that IE9 supports for HTML5 is good enough to bring fresh new content and design in every house.What we can show today in this browser and others is unbelievable if we think we had to deal with bloody PNG alpha channel and IE6 for ages!Why do we complain that much then?I do believe the only day we should really complain is the day we have used all possible techniques, fallbacks, and alchemies we could imagine to shrink 100% of IE9 potentials, the same we have done over these years with IE6 ... isn't it?

Premature Complaining VS Research

The main reason people adopted libraries such jQuery is the ability to bring "unthinkable" features even in older browsers. Hacks for rounded corners, DOMContentLoaded, canvas shims, Flash fallbacks, Sockets, PNG32 support, and many others have been all over the place in latest years ... and what do we do now?Rather than appreciate the fact we don't need them anymore and focus on what we really need next we would like to cuddle ourself behind the excuse "as usual, IE lacks behind".Now, honestly, ask yourself how many times you have been dealing with WebSockets, Database API, WebWorkers, WebGL, and all newest technologies we may already complain about without having a clue what the hell are these useful for ... and without considering that we will always have a way to fallback.

Is WebGL missing? Not Really, Not Now

Is not that since the browser has it, everybody can use it ... is much more. WebGL opens doors to the GPU and I bet +80% of web developers out there have zero knowledge about OpenGL ES 2.0 potentials and GLES shaders language.Apple clearly confirmed they have no intention to put WebGL support in their devices, and the reason is kinda logic: it is easy to put the GPU in an infinite loop and drain the battery or make the device unstable.Microsoft had different reasons to do not invest much into WebGL: DirectXChromium invested time to create Angle which aim is to convert OpenGL ES 2.0 calls into DirectX and make WebGL possible in Windows OS as well.

Different Fallbacks

If we really care about WebGL, if we really need to put such heavy content in our web pages or our advertisements ( shaders + textures + runtime parse/translate/compile ) we can always fallback into shims through Silverlight or Flash Player, as soon as it will implement Adobe effort to bring hardware accelerated 3D content within.

Wasn't Flash Death? ... NO!

... and thanks gosh will hopefully never die! Flash has been our best friend for all those missing features now partially re-implemented in HTML5 and Flash has been always one step forward.All those shims about storages, databases, files uploads, canvas, sockets and all the magic behind some library scene ... flash is not good but it's not that evil as well.

So, What's Next?

If it's about IE9 limits, we can simply wait that day we have discovered all possible ways to do what we need to do while if it's about WebGL we need some kick ass 3D developer with excellent knowledge of these 3D APIs: Silverlight and Molehill, aka Flash Player Incubator.With these kind of developers out there we could have possible shims for WebGL or, even better, a jQuery3D library able to make WebGL development easier and, hopefully, without GPU loops and memory exhaustive problems.Finally, what I really would like to see out there, is less "oh my god we are stuck forever again" and more "hey, I have spot this limit, let's figure out how to break it".

Saturday, April 09, 2011

Update more than a person asked me more details and here I am: The workshop will be Thursday 19th of May on Track 3 and from 9am to 5pm. Registrations open at 8am and to be sure everything I have written is correct, please double check the schedule.This time is not about my uncle, this time is about my workshop in Warsaw, during Falsy Values Event, and this is its description:

Massive rumours behind buzz words such HTML5 and ES5, the latest updated specification about JavaScript programming language, have surely increased confusion about where is JavaScript today, and how this language should be in the future.

Unfortunately, we all know that many users are still trapped behind really outdated browsers and their relative JS engines.

This could lead us to be stuck with old coding patterns and style but here I am to show most recent performances oriented techniques that could make the transition to this new specification less painful and efficient

Why Array extras, Object creation, and other new ES5 entries are not scary

Mobile and performance oriented applications: DO and DONTs

JS Harmony purpose and the future of JavaScript

The "It's Scripting" Logic

Too many times we convince ourself that if it is about a scripting programming language, performances are not important. Unfortunately, or fortunately, I have already said we don't have choices when it comes to "web browser environment".It's not that if we need speed, we change programming language, this is not an option for us ... we want be fast, as fast as possible!Everybody knows already that, even in JavaScript, a proper algorithm can be faster than a bad one written in C or ASM.This rule could be readapted more generically considering a better pattern faster than a worse one.

ES5 Oriented Patterns

Specially on mobile and tablet, recently on desktops as well, the latest version of JavaScript could bring many advantages in therms of performances but this is not it: ES5 brings different and new approaches that we should better consider now rather than wait that all browsers "will be there" and we'll see during this workshop different examples of graceful degradation.

Performances Speaking

Not all of us are that lucky to use JavaScript on the server side only.Even in this case, we will most likely deal with http connections and we'll have to serve some content, possibly with JavaScript as well if it's not a RESTFull service only.Performances on web have many faces: from download size to lazy loading advantage, up to browser specific builds and the best way to serve them. All these topics will be discussed during the workshop but hey ... if I have to be honest, there are many others there that could stimulate your interest ... I am just saying :P

Saturday, April 02, 2011

My uncle Paolo opened an Italian Restaurant in London, New Barnet, and I have been there few weeks ago to visit him and bring him my congratulations.While this is absolutely not technical, the story I would like to tell you is ...

The Real Beauty Of The Web

HTML5 is probably the most overrated buzz word since the Web started existing, most likely even more misunderstood than Ajax therm itself.Microsoft promoted his latest IE9 (and please use it if you like IE) behind the sentence Beauty Of The Web ... well, accordingly with Microsoft the web has always been beauty since Chrome, WebKit, Opera, and Firefox became real competitors ... but this is another story.What many did not get about this HTML5, is that it's born backward compatible, which means that as document declaration it can be used right now and there is nothing to wait for...The real value of HTML5 is the ability to bring newer techniques where available, still being compatible in W3C therms with all those old browsers that never followed strictly Web standards.This is beautiful, not because I have been able to create the latest "kick ass website with fantastic special effects", simply because following few steps and remembering few rules, the landing page I have created for Paolo should work in almost every damn browser with relevant market share presence.

we'll know the mobile web is "ready" when links to the desktop version are understood to be unnecessary

This sentence from @grigs perfectly summarize my idea of a landing page.While I was trying to take some inspiration, in this case checking other restaurant websites, I have realized that most of them where:

absolutely unusable from mobile devices and/or tablets

extremely heavy to download

entirely based on Flash Player

massive portals ... I mean ... seriously, it's a restaurant, not a social network!

Compromised Usability: Less Customers!

I have been living in London for a couple of years and I think I know something about the classic Londoner life style. First of all for a London citizen is quite common to have an unlimited bandwidth contract for a smart phone and about 20 pounds per month, smart phone included. Secondly, London has quite frenetic life-style and the "show me what I am looking for: NOW!" moment is specially frequent during lunch breaks and surely a nice to have in all other cases.If we land in a page that takes ages to be downloaded and does not give us instantly info we are looking for, in a restaurant case I guess a "where and what", we have to search again. Moreover, if the page uses all cool libraries and frameworks that have never been developed for mobile and all links and sections works only through these magic libraries, the user may be totally unable to access what he is loooking for: a place to eat!

Size Matters: The Annoyed Potential Customer

Many devices show on top how much data has been downloaded so far. If we see a progress bar that takes ages to be filled and a page that is empty for more than 5 seconds after the round-trip is completed, we start thinking the page is too heavy, the device is slow or, even worst, "FFS I am paying this bandwidth!".It's true, the web could be scary for all those people that have a pay per surf contract and if these people are scared to surf the net it's only our fault. Moreover, if the page takes too long to be visualized we go back and we re-fine the search or we click the next result in the list, isn't it?

Flash Player and the Skip Intro Anti Business

The (in)famous player we all know, the one that still shows videos on Youtube, has been wrongly used since the beginning when it comes to Web content. The classic skip intro for a 500Kb of bullshit nobody is interested about is the biggest epic fail of the history of web. Put a link in the main page that points to the intro? That would have been too much user friendly so ... naaaaaaaa!Even worst, many devices do not support the Flash Player since only lately this has become suitable for mobile devices without draining the little battery.If your business entry point cannot be reach by all possible customers, you paid the "skip intro" to ruin the potential of your business since all Apple products, as example, won't be able to reach your business.

The Restaurant Community Epic Fail

When I have seen that Paolo created a facebook group, the first thought has been: well done uncle, keep it updated!.When Paolo asked why the site I was planning to create could not have the community section, this is what I have answered:

it's a restaurant, not a social network

nobody comes back to a restaurant website. Once they reach the place, they'll come back to the restaurant, if happy, or they won't

if anybody is interested in your group, there is a link that points to this group ... and since facebook is the only place they will go back for sure, on-line speaking, let them chose to join the group and be notified via their home screen wall

Paolo understood my points, I still do not get why on earth a restaurant should create a community online with events notification, the registration form etc etc ... seriously, let social networks do this job and don't waste your time/money for this stuff ( KISS and YAGNI )

As Summary

I made this page as simple "best luck, uncle Paolo" present and over a week end and I hope you will like it. It is simple, it follows my favourite principles, and it's not pretentious as many other restaurant websites I have seen out there.Why did I post about it? To make a bit of advertisement for my uncle delicious food from Tuscany, and to tell the story about how the web is still too much stereotyped and rarely ad-hoc from real business value perspective.Keep it simple, and try to obtain the most important goal first: everything else could be added later, and only if you need it!